Okay, you've read all the praise, and it's all true, this is a helluva scary movie, well-made, the effects are outstanding, and it holds up well over time.



But that's not all there is to it.



We've all seen morph effects, one critter transforming smoothly into another, we were pretty bored with them by the early 1990's. Big deal.



But this was made before cheap, cheesy CGI morphs. There's nothing smooth about these transformations. Much the opposite. What's so monstrous about this Thing, is that everything about its transformations is so WRONG. This critter has a rather nasty disregard for the rules, it doesn't care that heads aren't supposed to sprout legs and walk off on their own.



Very imaginative special effects.